Revamping the Chaos-marks and sigils

Whenever it's come up in conversations, I've multiple times been prompted to do a write-up on this, and always felt it required quite a bit of brainstorming to get it done right if it were to be done ..so I'm opening up the door, and here it goes;

As has been mentioned many times by the community, and I know I myself have absolutely been one of those who mention it, amidst all the unfounded claims and complaints about Chaos being “OP” because of a set of wargear items available to them that are critically misunderstood among majority of people who complain about them.. as the game is looking to potentially be going in a good direction with hope for the future of it, might as well do some redesigning/revamps of things that don't feel correctly done in both a game-balance sense and a lore-sense.

The Chaos “god-marks” and their corresponding Sigil items for veterans.

The different marks receive numerous complaints by folks that say "they're the best wargear in the game" and that they're "too LP cheap, only 150LP". Yet people seem to forget every single one of them has pretty sizable drawbacks (that when combined with their benefits, more or less exactly equal the LP cost they have, where the drawbacks retract from the LP price of the benefits by "nerfing" the player).

But, this isn't about going into how they seem to be misunderstood and screamed "OP!" at all the time.
No, this is about changing the items to not only have class-fitting appeal to them, but also be in line with the lore, and "image" they're supposed to portray, and how it can be made more representative of what they more or less should be.

First up, might as well present a list of what the stats are on the different marks and sigils:

Mark of Nurgle

+20 Health

+30 Toughness

60% more Stamina/Fuel Regen delay

Sigil of Nurgle

+20 Health

+30 Toughness

60% more Stamina/Fuel Regen delay

+60 Armour

Mark of Slaanesh

+0.33 Run Speed Multiplier

+0.15 Sprint Speed Multiplier

50% Slower Armour Regen delay

Sigil of Slaanesh

+60 armor

+0.33 Run Speed Multiplier

+0.15 Sprint Speed Multiplier

50% Slower Armour Regen delay

Mark of Khorne

+0.15 Ranged Life Steal

+0.3 Melee Life Steal

+20 Health

No downed state, you get "downed" you're instantly dead (losing the "extra" health you have while downed)

No healing received from any other source than Life Steal or the occasional Fleshweaver Orb/Warp Crystal by other players that know it's possible to do use it on Khorne-users

Sigil of Khorne

+0.15 Ranged Life Steal

+0.3 Melee Life Steal

+20 Health

+60 Armour

No downed state, you get "downed" you're instantly dead (losing the "extra" health you have while downed)

No healing received from any other source than Life Steal or the occasional Fleshweaver Orb/Warp Crystal by other players that know it's possible to do use it on Khorne-users

Mark of Tzeentch

15% Health decrease

100% Armour Regen speed

50% less delay before Armour starts regenerating

Sigil of Tzeentch

15% Health decrease

100% Armour Regen speed

50% less delay before Armour starts regenerating

+60 Armour

So now that those are out of the way, onto how to revamp them to be more fitting of what they should be/represent, without jumping on the "just nerf them"-bandwagon many instantly will jump to. And this is where I'm not set in stone on most of the ideas, and as always would want input and ideas about how to make them into what they should be.

But to add onto it before I even start to go into each specific change, there is an indea primarily inspired when looking through the Eldar advancements and seeing their vet runes, that'd fit nicely with the marks/sigils, to make them feel more "fitting" when equipped on certain classes.
You see, the Eldar have some fantastically designed class-specific veteran items, that give benefits directly desirable for the classes they're for, rather than just generic items with overall application to all the classes that can use it.

For instance, the Swooping Hawk's vet rune "Blazing Hawk Rune", it gives +70 Armour and +1 fuel (which is quite fitting so you don't have to worry about too little fuel when you have vet-specific items equipped). Warlock's class specific stat on the rune gives +25 charge, Dire Avenger 30% less Armour Regen delay, Striking Scorpion 15% less Armour Regen delay, Dark Reaper +50 Health & +30 Toughness, Fire Dragon +30 Toughness & 15% less Armour Regen delay, Howling Banshee +80 Health (instead of +70 Armour as all others have) & 20% Life Steal. LSM and Orks also have their own respective types of the same deal in the form of the Halo's and Mega Gob's.

Those are quite nice design on bE's part, though obviously apart from Chaos not having it, and would be nice to see applied to Chaos as well. And we were promised quite a while back that advancement trees would be changed up (especially adding sub-faction/chapter specific sections, for chapters like space wolves etc).

I'll intentionally leave this specific part of the topic a bit more open, as it's a matter of tuning it for 4 marks, and fitting the marks for the 5 classes (-1, since sorcs can't have MoK/SoK).. and I'm sure @Njord-Halfhand will have plenty to say about MoK/SoK anyways ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But it should go hand-in-hand with what class it's applied to and what the god the mark is based around should portray. But it's more gonna be a sigil-thing to have additional stats, whereas the class-uniqueness of the marks should be a thing.

For instance; Mark of Tzeentch, non-psyker's wearing it get benefits from psyker actions (i.e; like more healing received, and less damage or something from spells etc, or a very Horus Heresy A Thousand Sons type of deal where a "ward" is active for non-psyker's near psykers, which could just be an effect requiring the Icon of Flame on the warparty leader), psykers get psyker related benefits like warp-charge pool being a secondary "protection" and affecting received damage depending on how much warp-charge the user currently has left in the pool. (which could even be where the "hp-%" penalty replacement was, i.e; you have normal survival-stats at full warp-charge like any other class, but drastic Toughness reduction if out of warp-charge. 50% of warp charge gone? 50% of Toughness gone, etc.)

But as said previously, I'll leave the stat-part of the marks more or less open to input, but I'm a strong proponent of the following one:

Changes to Nurgle;

Taking a play out of the TableTop 8th edition play-book

Basing Mark of Nurgle on the Nurgle-stuff for Death Guard in 8th edition

The more survival stats you have, the slower you move, and vice versa. (Also a "ADAD-counter" if you will)

Allowing for cheap items or trinkets or something (that are nurgle-specific items) that give both buffs and drawbacks (rather than the mark itself doing it).

+10% hp? -0.1 movement speed modifier

+20 toughness? -0.2 run speed modifier

etc

The harder it is to kill you, the harder it is for you to avoid being hit in close proximity

The further away you are, the less ranged attacks do to you, but the harder it is for you the closer you get (though in TT the death guard even have it to the point of it being a chance to completely ignore damage at certain distances away, not sure how that would float on the EC-waters or be designed in game-design terms either, but still a cool concept from TT nonetheless)

Disconnecting the stamina-tie-in from the mark/sigil, would mean it wouldn't massively penalize fuel for raptors (as it's using the same system, which should be separate from stamina, but oh well), so we might actually see Nurgle-raptors on the field, and not always MoS, MoK or Shard of Steel Raptors.

And as the secondary most complained mark is MoS, it needs to fit with the idea of Slaanesh being the god of excess.. if it's not excessive, it's not slaaneshi. And then it leads onto Mark of Khorne, which is in dire need of redesigning, as it's currently just a quasi-vampire mark for some odd reason. It shouldn't even be Life Steal based at all, but there's A LOT of suggestions possible for it, to get a more appropriate portrayal of Khorne via the mark, that's not tied to Life Steal.. but if the mark had a system like a very small passive health regen over time (like 2hp per second, with a delay just like before armour regen in case of damage having been taken etc), and then adding onto it there could be a "adrenaline"-effect where kills/damage dealt temporarily sped up the HoT via a small buff.

Obviously, as said before.. not set in stone on the latter.

I do really hope changes to such like this, could be a trend (for all factions) to make the game feel fresh for longer, as new stuff is implemented from the workshop etc as time goes on. Hopefully it could also lead to (when we get the vehicle-customization stuff finally) applying the "god-blessed" function to vehicles (for an example, DoW2 has quite a bit of it as an easy go-to reference to see the gist of it).

If it's possible to get a revamp like this going, maybe there's hope for more fitting changes to the other factions as well, more fun gimmicks for Orks would be fantastic etc.

Whenever it's come up in conversations, I've multiple times been prompted to do a write-up on this, and always felt it required quite a bit of brainstorming to get it done right if it were to be done ..so I'm opening up the door, and here it goes;

As has been mentioned many times by the community, and I know I myself have absolutely been one of those who mention it, amidst all the unfounded claims and complaints about Chaos being “OP” because of a set of wargear items available to them that are critically misunderstood among majority of people who complain about them.. as the game is looking to potentially be going in a good direction with hope for the future of it, might as well do some redesigning/revamps of things that don't feel correctly done in both a game-balance sense and a lore-sense.

The Chaos “god-marks” and their corresponding Sigil items for veterans.

The different marks receive numerous complaints by folks that say "they're the best wargear in the game" and that they're "too LP cheap, only 150LP". Yet people seem to forget every single one of them has pretty sizable drawbacks (that when combined with their benefits, more or less exactly equal the LP cost they have, where the drawbacks retract from the LP price of the benefits by "nerfing" the player).

But, this isn't about going into how they seem to be misunderstood and screamed "OP!" at all the time.
No, this is about changing the items to not only have class-fitting appeal to them, but also be in line with the lore, and "image" they're supposed to portray, and how it can be made more representative of what they more or less should be.

First up, might as well present a list of what the stats are on the different marks and sigils:

Mark of Nurgle

+20 Health

+30 Toughness

60% more Stamina/Fuel Regen delay

Sigil of Nurgle

+20 Health

+30 Toughness

60% more Stamina/Fuel Regen delay

+60 Armour

Mark of Slaanesh

+0.33 Run Speed Multiplier

+0.15 Sprint Speed Multiplier

50% Slower Armour Regen delay

Sigil of Slaanesh

+60 armor

+0.33 Run Speed Multiplier

+0.15 Sprint Speed Multiplier

50% Slower Armour Regen delay

Mark of Khorne

+0.15 Ranged Life Steal

+0.3 Melee Life Steal

+20 Health

No downed state, you get "downed" you're instantly dead (losing the "extra" health you have while downed)

No healing received from any other source than Life Steal or the occasional Fleshweaver Orb/Warp Crystal by other players that know it's possible to do use it on Khorne-users

Sigil of Khorne

+0.15 Ranged Life Steal

+0.3 Melee Life Steal

+20 Health

+60 Armour

No downed state, you get "downed" you're instantly dead (losing the "extra" health you have while downed)

No healing received from any other source than Life Steal or the occasional Fleshweaver Orb/Warp Crystal by other players that know it's possible to do use it on Khorne-users

Mark of Tzeentch

15% Health decrease

100% Armour Regen speed

50% less delay before Armour starts regenerating

Sigil of Tzeentch

15% Health decrease

100% Armour Regen speed

50% less delay before Armour starts regenerating

+60 Armour

So now that those are out of the way, onto how to revamp them to be more fitting of what they should be/represent, without jumping on the "just nerf them"-bandwagon many instantly will jump to. And this is where I'm not set in stone on most of the ideas, and as always would want input and ideas about how to make them into what they should be.

But to add onto it before I even start to go into each specific change, there is an indea primarily inspired when looking through the Eldar advancements and seeing their vet runes, that'd fit nicely with the marks/sigils, to make them feel more "fitting" when equipped on certain classes.
You see, the Eldar have some fantastically designed class-specific veteran items, that give benefits directly desirable for the classes they're for, rather than just generic items with overall application to all the classes that can use it.

For instance, the Swooping Hawk's vet rune "Blazing Hawk Rune", it gives +70 Armour and +1 fuel (which is quite fitting so you don't have to worry about too little fuel when you have vet-specific items equipped). Warlock's class specific stat on the rune gives +25 charge, Dire Avenger 30% less Armour Regen delay, Striking Scorpion 15% less Armour Regen delay, Dark Reaper +50 Health & +30 Toughness, Fire Dragon +30 Toughness & 15% less Armour Regen delay, Howling Banshee +80 Health (instead of +70 Armour as all others have) & 20% Life Steal. LSM and Orks also have their own respective types of the same deal in the form of the Halo's and Mega Gob's.

Those are quite nice design on bE's part, though obviously apart from Chaos not having it, and would be nice to see applied to Chaos as well. And we were promised quite a while back that advancement trees would be changed up (especially adding sub-faction/chapter specific sections, for chapters like space wolves etc).

I'll intentionally leave this specific part of the topic a bit more open, as it's a matter of tuning it for 4 marks, and fitting the marks for the 5 classes (-1, since sorcs can't have MoK/SoK).. and I'm sure @Njord-Halfhand will have plenty to say about MoK/SoK anyways ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

But it should go hand-in-hand with what class it's applied to and what the god the mark is based around should portray. But it's more gonna be a sigil-thing to have additional stats, whereas the class-uniqueness of the marks should be a thing.

For instance; Mark of Tzeentch, non-psyker's wearing it get benefits from psyker actions (i.e; like more healing received, and less damage or something from spells etc, or a very Horus Heresy A Thousand Sons type of deal where a "ward" is active for non-psyker's near psykers, which could just be an effect requiring the Icon of Flame on the warparty leader), psykers get psyker related benefits like warp-charge pool being a secondary "protection" and affecting received damage depending on how much warp-charge the user currently has left in the pool. (which could even be where the "hp-%" penalty replacement was, i.e; you have normal survival-stats at full warp-charge like any other class, but drastic Toughness reduction if out of warp-charge. 50% of warp charge gone? 50% of Toughness gone, etc.)

But as said previously, I'll leave the stat-part of the marks more or less open to input, but I'm a strong proponent of the following one:

Changes to Nurgle;

Taking a play out of the TableTop 8th edition play-book

Basing Mark of Nurgle on the Nurgle-stuff for Death Guard in 8th edition

The more survival stats you have, the slower you move, and vice versa. (Also a "ADAD-counter" if you will)

Allowing for cheap items or trinkets or something (that are nurgle-specific items) that give both buffs and drawbacks (rather than the mark itself doing it).

+10% hp? -0.1 movement speed modifier

+20 toughness? -0.2 run speed modifier

etc

The harder it is to kill you, the harder it is for you to avoid being hit in close proximity

The further away you are, the less ranged attacks do to you, but the harder it is for you the closer you get (though in TT the death guard even have it to the point of it being a chance to completely ignore damage at certain distances away, not sure how that would float on the EC-waters or be designed in game-design terms either, but still a cool concept from TT nonetheless)

Disconnecting the stamina-tie-in from the mark/sigil, would mean it wouldn't massively penalize fuel for raptors (as it's using the same system, which should be separate from stamina, but oh well), so we might actually see Nurgle-raptors on the field, and not always MoS, MoK or Shard of Steel Raptors.

And as the secondary most complained mark is MoS, it needs to fit with the idea of Slaanesh being the god of excess.. if it's not excessive, it's not slaaneshi. And then it leads onto Mark of Khorne, which is in dire need of redesigning, as it's currently just a quasi-vampire mark for some odd reason. It shouldn't even be Life Steal based at all, but there's A LOT of suggestions possible for it, to get a more appropriate portrayal of Khorne via the mark, that's not tied to Life Steal.. but if the mark had a system like a very small passive health regen over time (like 2hp per second, with a delay just like before armour regen in case of damage having been taken etc), and then adding onto it there could be a "adrenaline"-effect where kills/damage dealt temporarily sped up the HoT via a small buff.

Obviously, as said before.. not set in stone on the latter.

I do really hope changes to such like this, could be a trend (for all factions) to make the game feel fresh for longer, as new stuff is implemented from the workshop etc as time goes on. Hopefully it could also lead to (when we get the vehicle-customization stuff finally) applying the "god-blessed" function to vehicles (for an example, DoW2 has quite a bit of it as an easy go-to reference to see the gist of it).

If it's possible to get a revamp like this going, maybe there's hope for more fitting changes to the other factions as well, more fun gimmicks for Orks would be fantastic etc.

Click to expand...

1. The Mark of Chaos ae not intended for specific classes. They are meant to be useful for all classes.

2. The idea with the Mark of Tzeentch is nice, but sounds like a lot of work. Too much work.

3. Movements are covered by the physics-engine and the animations. A CSM walking in slow-motion would look really stupid.

4. The damage drop-off of a weapon over range is handled by the weapon-stats when measuring the distance between weapon and target, not when calculating the shot itself.

I would add a regeneration-buff to the Mark of Khorne: Execute an enemy (-> taking his skull) and you have massive healing for 30 seconds, making you almost invincible for 30 seconds.
Passive health-regeneration is NOT a good idea, because then Khorne-players would just hold back and wait until they have healed themselves. (Would fit better to Mark of Tzeentch.)

And there is something you should know about bE: They will never implement any of your ideas (never ever), because they do not even have enough people for the stuff THEY want to add. And their backlog of stuff they always wanted to add stretches back to 2 years before the game was even launched.

bE's current list of promises (subject to changes on a whim) consists of:
- proper campaign-system based on a personal goals 2.0 system
- remodeling of all vehicles
- revamp of all vehicles so they can have different loadouts

By my estimate, we can expect bE to deliver on these promises (unless they get shelved, changed on a whim and/or replaced with something else entirely) by sometime between late 2018 and summer 2019.

1. The Mark of Chaos ae not intended for specific classes. They are meant to be useful for all classes.

2. The idea with the Mark of Tzeentch is nice, but sounds like a lot of work. Too much work.

3. Movements are covered by the physics-engine and the animations. A CSM walking in slow-motion would look really stupid.

4. The damage drop-off of a weapon over range is handled by the weapon-stats when measuring the distance between weapon and target, not when calculating the shot itself.

I would add a regeneration-buff to the Mark of Khorne: Execute an enemy (-> taking his skull) and you have massive healing for 30 seconds, making you almost invincible for 30 seconds.
Passive health-regeneration is NOT a good idea, because then Khorne-players would just hold back and wait until they have healed themselves. (Would fit better to Mark of Tzeentch.)

And there is something you should know about bE: They will never implement any of your ideas (never ever), because they do not even have enough people for the stuff THEY want to add. And their backlog of stuff they always wanted to add stretches back to 2 years before the game was even launched.

bE's current list of promises (subject to changes on a whim) consists of:
- proper campaign-system based on a personal goals 2.0 system
- remodeling of all vehicles
- revamp of all vehicles so they can have different loadouts

By my estimate, we can expect bE to deliver on these promises (unless they get shelved, changed on a whim and/or replaced with something else entirely) by sometime between late 2018 and summer 2019.

Click to expand...

To avoid writing a wall of text addressing every point in detail (as I'm in a hurry currently) I'm gonna reply specifically to your worry about just "wait in cover and heal up".

That's a REALLY long time to wait in cover "and just heal up" if it's in the middle of a fight, and as said.. there would be a delay before it starts, which could be affected by executions etc. Want to make the healing start quicker? Execute someone and don't take damage the next few seconds (so combat-executions are not an option). But the idea of the "buff" would be almost functioning like an ailment, in the sense that it'd be based on increasing "stacks" of it to actually get a noticeable benefit. 10% of bar? Nothing. 33% of bar? Up to 3hps from 2hps. 50% still 3hps. 66% of bar 4hps, 90%+ of bar 10hps. All possible to tune to work well.

Though there is plenty more to be said about how to get it right, at this very moment, I don't have the time

-Tzeentch should have inherent +mana or +mana regen, or + spell potency. Tzeentch is all about Psykers and warp based magic. A proper Tzeentch Sword(for Sorcs and all melee classes) and a Tzeentch knife as well.

-Khorne should have inherent +something to melee and something +per execution(skulls for the Skull Throne) like a full heal or a 30 second HOT if you're at full health. Khornate weapons should have more than just life leech. Adding life leech to your existing life leech is extremely redundant and just lame. That's tantamount to adding a drum mag on top of your box mag. i.e. Simply not practical and not a lot of thought or effort put into the concept. A proper Khornate sword and a Khornate knife as well.

-Slaanesh could have some sort of self damaging effect that buffs you in some way. We're only talking like 1% health per second x 10 seconds. A proper Slaaneshi sword and a Slaaneshi knife as well.

-Nurgle is pretty damned solid. The only complaint i have about Nurgle is the Sorc heal. Sorc Nurgle heal should have at least a 33% or higher damage mitigation effect in addition to the heal. The current mitigation effect is extremely ineffective compared to huge amounts of DPS from incoming ranged damage. The spell in it's current state is NOT worth the LP or mana it costs to cast. I've dropped this spell from all my loadouts and instead use the default, single target heal.

Misc:

-Full armor sets or special helmet for each mark. Equipping the full set(or helm) gives the player a minor buff or adds a minor outgoing AOE debuff. Of course implementing something similar for all factions.

1. The Mark of Chaos ae not intended for specific classes. They are meant to be useful for all classes.

Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree. Maybe it's because we've all become so used to the way the current marks are, but I think that if all the Marks have their own flavor, there is always going to be certain classes that will always synergize the best with a particular mark. Nurgle is the defacto mark for Traitors. Slaanesh for Raptors. There is some wiggle room for TA, Sorc and Havocs but it's highly dependant on play style.
It would be great if all marks could find a home with every class (... Khorne Sorcerer... lvl 99 Heresy) but as you said, alot of work. More than what they can handle. So for now, little tweaks here and there and I'd call it good. Heal to full on execute for Khorne is all I want.

Intersting ideas. You make me think of something I've been wanting for a while in EC which is something akin to the narcissistic sorcerer from DOW2's last stand. Something that the warpthirster axe is like a hint at. A sorcerer that trades in ranged powers in order to self buff instead.

-Slaanesh could have some sort of self damaging effect that buffs you in some way. We're only talking like 1% health per second x 10 seconds.

Click to expand...

Combat drugs... Or how about losing life when you are not in combat? If you don't deal damage for 30 seconds, you start losing life. (Because followers of Slaanesh get bored easily.)

-Full armor sets or special helmet for each mark. Equipping the full set(or helm) gives the player a minor buff or adds a minor outgoing AOE debuff. Of course implementing something similar for all factions.

-Tzeentch should have inherent +mana or +mana regen, or + spell potency. Tzeentch is all about Psykers and warp based magic. A proper Tzeentch Sword(for Sorcs and all melee classes) and a Tzeentch knife as well.

-Khorne should have inherent +something to melee and something +per execution(skulls for the Skull Throne) like a full heal or a 30 second HOT if you're at full health. Khornate weapons should have more than just life leech. Adding life leech to your existing life leech is extremely redundant and just lame. That's tantamount to adding a drum mag on top of your box mag. i.e. Simply not practical and not a lot of thought or effort put into the concept. A proper Khornate sword and a Khornate knife as well.

-Slaanesh could have some sort of self damaging effect that buffs you in some way. We're only talking like 1% health per second x 10 seconds. A proper Slaaneshi sword and a Slaaneshi knife as well.

-Nurgle is pretty damned solid. The only complaint i have about Nurgle is the Sorc heal. Sorc Nurgle heal should have at least a 33% or higher damage mitigation effect in addition to the heal. The current mitigation effect is extremely ineffective compared to huge amounts of DPS from incoming ranged damage. The spell in it's current state is NOT worth the LP or mana it costs to cast. I've dropped this spell from all my loadouts and instead use the default, single target heal.

Misc:

-Full armor sets or special helmet for each mark. Equipping the full set(or helm) gives the player a minor buff or adds a minor outgoing AOE debuff. Of course implementing something similar for all factions.

Click to expand...

Khorne should be "wildly swinging just to hit" focused, and rapid attacks should be a priority, so some effect/benefit that makes players swing like morons just to get as many hits as possible. In the same sense Khorne-weapons should be fast-attack focused, with more (or equal) damage in the fast-attack damage than the heavy attack (where the heavy-attack function is mostly just as a part of the RTS system, or for the stagger-effect). But there has to be some effects that benefit that type of psychopath-murder-rage kind of wild slashing that the followers of khorne should depict. The idea of the teeth of khorne is "about right", but almost not enough for what it is (outside of the tiny rpm increase, it's not very good, as you're restricted to the mark with it as well as no suppression). But, the HoT idea still stands.

The notion of slaanesh having to be self-harming and bdsm-focused is just partially correct for what slaanesh represents, as said before.. it's primarily the god of excess. Everything in excess, hence why noise-marines are a thing. It would more or less be impossible for them to add some form of "self harm" or "friendly harm" benefits without major change of game engine mechanics.. So I guess that's out the window sadly.
Though a "buff" effect that adds a dot/ailment for in turn giving benefits as a "bonus" for the punishment you're getting, would be interesting. Slaanesh-users should have a lot more items for just annoying the victim, be it flash-grenades, grav-grenades that slow movement for a bit on hit targets, etc.
If you take mark of slaanesh strategems into account, it's stuff like "chance to ignore damage" if within certain range of a slaanesh psykers. Also stuff like "chance of instantly shooting again" which translates to chance of instant reload, or something of the sorts. Both excessive things tbh, excessive shooting, excessive annoyance etc. Also, a thing 8th edition emperor's children (or rather followers of slaanesh) have, is the type of "one last attack upon death", sort of like a form of martyrdom from call of duty etc, which is explained as either shooting their weapon or throwing grenades upon death and such. So a martyrdom type of deal would be very fitting.

Nurgle is "solid" but not at all at the same time. It's not done right in the sense of it's just too blanket-effective, and the penalty does only really punish certain classes, mostly preventing them from use due to the penalty, which doesn't add up with the lore of nurgle-marked marines. Though that could be solved by separating the fuel from stamina. On the topic of the nurgle heal, yeah it's absolutely not worth bringing, for that LP it's not healing ENOUGH for it to be worth while. It would be nice if that heal also had a poison aura, so if enemies were in it, they got a poison-ailment stacking on them. It's absolutely waaay too warp charge expensive for how little it heals.. just because it's "an aoe capable of more healing in theory".

On the topic of armor-sets, it's now possible to do that with the workshop "becoming a thing", that could be used to add special armor-sets replacing the daemonforged and warp-touched armors, that were just god-marked and gave mark-specific effects (and thus looked the part as well).

A Chaos Undivided Mark with associated weapons and Wargear. DOW II did Undivided pretty well for the Chaos characters and campaign so it can be done.

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I wouldn't call it a "mark", but if you look at a legion like the Iron Warriors, they primarily avoid god-affiliation, and are quick to do impromptu-amputations in the field if they start to get possessed limbs etc, and just replace it with bionics and living metal limbs (necrodermis). So there needs to be more options for non-mark gear, as the shard of steel is just about the ONLY option so far, and it's pretty underwhelming when you're more or less forced to pick marks.

Intersting ideas. You make me think of something I've been wanting for a while in EC which is something akin to the narcissistic sorcerer from DOW2's last stand. Something that the warpthirster axe is like a hint at. A sorcerer that trades in ranged powers in order to self buff instead.

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Yeah more narcissistic type of deals would be cool, but has to be almost creating a different "path" of playstyle for the sorc, just like the warpthirst axe does.. basically turns the psyker into a melee-unit with worse survival. But in DoW2 you get all sorts of variations of it, be it granting much more potent psyker spells, or sizable survival-buffs, or even giving up your healing for having to rely on the passive health gain (in DoW2 that is of course, as EC doesn't have it) to get new offensive abilities or survival-stats via damage-taken-reduction etc.
It's a great idea I hope to see more of! Especially if the nurgle scythe-axe @NoahWard was working on has some EXTREMELY nurgle-leaning benefits to it, to want to spread plague etc. Giving classes different sub-class-roles via niche narcissistic functions granted from equipped items. Specialization or whatever you want to call it.